Everything You Wanted To Know About Native, Hybrid and Web Apps; but Were Afraid To Ask

As the debate about web, hybrid and native continues, we are starting to see trends that give us a glimpse into the future of mobile app development. One fact remains the same, all three approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages and the decision of choosing the right approach should be made on a case per case basis. Knowing the best use cases for all three approaches will help you make better choices based on your project needs. The infographic below takes a more in depth look at the statistics, trends and best use cases for the three approaches.

The future is “multi-platform”

The days of desktop only apps are over. Today’s users are increasingly accessing information through multiple devices. Developers will soon find themselves not only developing for various smartphones and tablets but also for wearable devices, smart TVs, and connected cars. Although this change makes the development process more challenging, it also creates new opportunities of revenue.

In addition to multi-platform development, many other moving variables have to be considered when choosing the ideal approach for the mobile application project. Here is a quick look at all three approaches:

Hybrid apps are web apps wrapped in a native shell. They are cross-platform and can be distributed to the multiple app stores without the extra effort needed for native apps. The market is seeing an increasing interest in hybrid application development.

Web apps require the least amount of resource investment of the three. Web apps are cross-platform and ideal for information, search, and shopping applications. The biggest disadvantage of the web approach is the lack of app store access.

About the author

Ruslan Mursalzade

Ruslan Mursalzade (@RuslanML) is a techie who is passionate about all things design, technology, entrepreneurship, software, and electronics. Ruslan works for Telerik as a Product Marketing Manager based out of San Francisco Bay Area and strives to deliver game-changing products to customers.

8 Comments

Manuel Bago
22 May 2014

Cool, funny and interesting. Thx @RuslanML

Robert
06 Jun 2014

Native will always be the best solution. Hybrid's will always have that "laggy" feeling

Stas Shusha
06 Jun 2014

Unfortunately this infographics doesn't include Xamarin-like native cross-platform solutions which are like Native but at the same time development-cheap and would be the winner.

MD Developments
06 Jun 2014

When Facebook introduced their mobile hybrid app, the user experience and ratings declined significantly. After that they gone back to native. The result was: restored ratings and user experience satisfaction.
There were other companies with the same experience (don't remember which ones. There is a analysis report on the web with all the statistics and numbers).
I only see Xamarin as potential "cross-platform" framework. Native UI/UX and natively compiled shared logic code.

leoniDEV
09 Jun 2014

There is also the HTML developmet with WinRT that is native developmet...

leoniDEV
09 Jun 2014

There is also the HTML developmet with WinRT that is native developmet...

Every comment other than Manuel's is very fanboy-ish. Robert is of an ancient mindset and is falling by the wayside. "Always?" What if you have an extremely limited budget? What if you're a mom and pop shop? What if you don't need access to the device? What if your app is very simple and the benefit of native is slim to none? What if you build a native iOS app and then build a PhoneGap app for ALL OTHER PLATFORMS? Do you really want to build an app per tiny, niche device that only has a 2% market share? Or build one or two native apps for the top devices (Android and iOS) and then a PhoneGap app for all other platforms? What about games?

I like Stas' comment, too: what about Xamarin? Titanium? Or the emerging strategies like CodeNameOne?

MD Developments: Facebook's experience is not the end all, be all of every single solitary mobile app. Each app is different. Facebook is a MASSIVE corporation with endless resources. And this is their flagship app. And it has an immensely deep breadth of functionality. Of course they should go native! But that has NOTHING to do with Joe Blow's Restaurant app or My Amazing Todo App or the vast majority of apps in general.

Mobile app development is goes on rising day by day and there many advancement has developed in that. There will be multi platform applications in future so that they will responsive for any devices. Here its nice information provided about the hybrid technology and its informative as well useful. Thanks for sharing this.